England was struggling with economic difficulties and social tensions in 1970’s including high inflation and strikes. The same decade also saw the transformation of British industry, how did you experience this period?
To be honest when you’re young, and we were young in the 70s, we had a great time with girlfriends, drinking, playing music and doing lots of part time jobs which were easy to come by those days. I met the guys from the band in 1971 and my wife in 1975 (married in 1978).
Menace was formed in 76, but you were already playing music before that if my info is correct… Tell me about the beginnings you inspiration? What motivated you to pick up an instrument? (Drum)
Yes as indicated in the last answer we met in 197I. I went to school with Charlie and Steve was in a class the year below us. Charlie and I went to a youth club together where we learnt to play I started to play drums in a Glenn Miller Orchestra which is why I always loved a little bit of swing in the drums. I don’t know why I was inspired to play drums, it just felt right. When I was very young in Ireland my grandmother predicted I would be a famous drummer.
You came to England from Ireland. When did this happen? For what reasons did you come to England?
Yes, Charlie and myself both came from the West of Ireland around the same time. The reason for this was economic as there weren’t very many jobs in Ireland at the time. I love Ireland, and go back at least once a year to visit my relatives.
If I understand correctly, you went to the same school As Johnny (Rotten). Did you already know each other then, or did punk bring you together? If you knew each other before the Pistols, please tell us about it…and your relationship….
Yes we went to the same school as John Lydon, that was Saint William of York in King’s Cross. We knew Johnny vaguely but didn’t hang out with him, or Steve for that matter, as they were both a year younger than us and that seemed to make a lot of difference at that age. Interestingly we have not met Johnny Rotten in all the years we’ve been playing punk. I do know a mutual friend called Steve English who we went to music club with.
How did you meet punk rock? How big of a slap in the face was it?..😀 What attracted you to it?
We met, as you put it, punk rock in the late summer of 1976 when we returned from Germany in a band called Stonehenge. In Germany we played American air bases and as we were playing for five hours a night we got reasonably good at playing our instruments, We discovered punk on our return, particularly as we remembered Johnny from school, we loved the whole thing about it. We did our first gig in early autumn at the Lord Nelson on Holloway Rd. We played the Roxy in early ’77.
You come from a working class family. How bad was King ‘s Cross and the surrounding area at the time?
Yes I come from a working class family and even though I’ve now retired I still consider myself to be working class. My mother worked as a cashier and my father worked as a butcher in a London hotel. I worked various jobs in catering in my early days and took two years off to follow my punk dream but started work again in 1978 and worked without a break until 2022 at the ripe old age of 68.
As I said earlier I went to school in Kings Cross and although rough, it wasn’t terribly rough as we didn’t have much problem. There was a lot of poverty in the area and my school friends didn’t have much money to do things. As I said, we didn’t know any different so we were basically happy. As a footnote, you would hardly recognise Kings Cross today as it’s been gentrified. One of the buildings of my old school is now houses but the other one still exists as a school.
How active was the IRA in Ireland at that time?
By the time my family and I left Ireland in 1968 there was very little visible activity from the IRA in our part of the country (West) as we were no longer under British rule. Both my grand uncles on my mother side were officers in the IRA which in their time was under the occupation of England. My grandfather on my father side was in the Merchant Navy.
What kind of fan are you?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by this, but if you mean what type of music do I like, my taste is really eclectic and I like everything from Johnny Cash to Thin Lizzy and of course punk/Oi/Ska
What are your impressions of the fan culture back then?
Well the whole punk movement was immense and people would travel to gigs all over London and the southeast. We had lots of fans in the early days, and we still do now which is an honour for us as we were never one of the bigger bands.
How noisy was the area on match days?
Well, I lived very close in my young years to the Arsenal stadium and you can tell when goals were scored by the noise in the air. I didn’t go to matches as I didn’t have much money and I was more interested in music which I spend every waking hour pursuing. The same goes for Steve and Charlie
Menace started in 1976. By the way, what did you want to express with the name? How did you experience the punk explosion?
The name Menace was meant to portray angst, energy, mischievousness, mystery and a little danger.
It was also about fun a bit like Dennis the Menace in the early Beano comics.
I think you were the first Street punk band, with melodic songs, lots of vocals, and scream able, catchy lyrics. That’s why not only punks but also skinhead came to your concerts.
You’re definitely right, we were one of the first, but there were others like Sham 69 and Slaughter and the Dogs. We met Sham at our first Roxy gig in 77. It was also their first Roxy gig and we got on very well. Still play some things with him today 50 years later.
I think it must have been a tough few years with a lot of trouble. Tell me a little bit….
There was of course some trouble, but it tended to come around 1978, when skinheads got involved on mass and for some reason or other seemed to be upset with some punks. I think this is more to do with terrace mentality as the early days the skinheads that came to the shows were not like that at all, and in fact many of them went on to become successful in their own right. For example Suggs would come to see us regularly as did Tom McCourt.
The first line -up was Morgan, Charlie, Steve, and you. How long did it stay like that, why did Morgan leave?
The first line up was indeed Morgan, Charlie, Steve and myself and it existed officially from 1976 until 1979. We’re all a little bit disillusioned with the violence at some shows but Morgan for some reason just had enough and said one morning he was leaving. What’s interesting is that nobody tried to stop him. He was a little bit fucked up, and we now know that this was caused by addiction. He got married in ’79 and moved to Canada for a short time before returning to the UK and then returning to Canada again where he unfortunately died in 1991
The first singles were released in 1977 with the title Screwed Up, which became an immediate success. If I read correctly, Charlie (UK Subs) immediately asked the label for one of the records? Which label released the record? What was the relationship with them like? What political problems arose regarding the record?
Yes, my old friend Charlie indeed was the first person to buy a copy of Screwed Up. The real story is I met him at a bus stop on Oxford St. He saw that I had some records and asked me to have a look when he saw them he immediately bought one. Later on he went and formed the UK Subs. Charlie and I have been really close friends over the years. We released the record on Illegal which was part of the Miles Copeland empire but we didn’t have any issues with the label we didn’t know any better and everything was OK, also there was no politics involved in it at the time.
How should I imagine London at the time? How many concert venues were there? Labels? Distribution opportunities for a band starting out at that time?
London at the time was amazing for punk lots of labels lots of gigs all over the city so that you could play every night of the week someplace in London. London still is a great city (don’t believe what you read on social media).
Tell me about some concert experiences from those days….
Nothing really stands out because every concert was insane everybody dived on us, dived on the stage and dived on each other it was absolutely nuts and we loved every minute of it. the Roxy, the Vortex, Hope & Anchor, the 100 Club, the White Heart, the Last Bastion, the Scala at Kings Cross the list goes on you had to be there it was amazing.
You played drums in the beginning, then over time you switched to guitar, and even sang, but I saw you playing bass in the early 2000s (maybe Red Alert)
Yes drums were my first instrument and my passion and I played drums from 1972 until 2020 when I swapped to being the front man after our singer at the time died of prostate cancer. I’ve never played the bass or played for Red Alert but I do also play guitar and did for a little while after COVID. The guys prefer if I don’t play the guitar as I’m not that good
Going back to the early days, they tried to make the band impossible because of political references….how did you experience this?
Well the single GLC was banned by the BBC but not for political reasons it was because we told magistrates to masturbate and they didn’t like that. Other than that, our songs were not political in that sense they were more observational not about the left or right wing but about injustice and intolerance.
In 1978, the G.L.C. single came out. It became a brutal classic song. How big did it sound then? I think there was a total joy under the song at the concert….
Indeed GLC was a huge song we recorded it in 1978 but had been playing it since 1976 and every time we did play it the audience went crazy. They still go crazy today which is fantastic it is being recorded by a big German band at the moment and I look forward to hearing that. I think it has been recorded by several other bands at least 12 that I can think of. We will never get tired of playing the song as it always guaranteed to be a rabble rouser.
Then 4 more singles were released, I need nothing, last year’s youth, final vinyl, the young ones and then you ended the band for quite a long time.
4 singles were recorded while the band existed but the last single was released after we broke up and was remastered by us in 1980. That was final vinyl, and it was meant to be a thank you to all our fans. The next time we got together was officially in 1998 where we played a show with Mark Perry in Hackney and decided to do GLC. We were a band called the Collection at the time. The audience went nuts so at that moment we decided to get the band back together. John Lacey Vocals, Andrew Tweedy Guitar, Charlie Casey Bass and me on Drums.
Why did you decide to do that? Was there a farewell concert? How did you experience the band’s period from 1976 to 1980?
The last concert we did with the three of us playing what when we changed to Vermillion and the Aces. We didn’t do a farewell concert with Morgan in the band as he just left one morning and we didn’t see him again for another six months. We were very lucky to be remembered as we only had 13 songs altogether.
Tell us about the iconic places you played and the iconic bands you shared the stage with…
Well I guess the most iconic place we played was CBGB’s in New York City two days before those aeroplanes hit the twin towers. Of course the Roxy was probably the most iconic place as it was the first, but Japan was also excellent. We have played with a lot of big bands, eg, The Damned, Cock Sparrer, Sham 69, UK Subs, Cockney Rejects and many more that have slipped my mind as we were often drunk.
In 1981 you formed a band without Morgan, which I think was more rock -oriented than Menace…Tell me about that attempt…
Actually the dates are wrong. When Menace broke up in 1979, we were asked by Miles Copeland to be the backing band for Vermilion which we did. Our last gig with her was at the famous Lyceum ballroom. She sacked us straight away after we played GLC and the place went nuts. This made her angry because she was expecting to do an encore and nobody wanted to hear her after GLC. Straight away we formed the Aces as we had been secretly rehearsing to do this for a while. The Aces broke up I believe in 1981 and apart from doing a few silly bands I didn’t play again until 1998.
I know that Steve (guitar) founded the Step forward label? You band, like Chelsea, Fall, Sham 69, Chron gen…etc…How did the idea for the label come about?
You’re incorrect with this as well. Steve did not form step forward it was formed by Mark Perry from
ATV and Miles Copeland. This idea came from the mind of Mark but I don’t know the idea behind it apart from he wanted to make independent records for smaller bands.
In the early 80’s the three you formed a band called Aces.
The Aces were a great fun band and had some potential as we had some good songs. Unfortunately we didn’t stand out as we needed a real front man. We should have got another drummer in and I could have been the front man then.
What is worth knowing about that?
At the time the band was managed by Harry T Murlowski AKA ‘hurry up Harry’ from the Sham 69
song. He was also really good friends with Mark Perry, Miles Copeland and Steve Tannett.
Please tell me how you experienced the 80’s the Margaret Thatcher era…
The era of Maggie Thatcher was horrible, it was all about greed and selling everything off to the highest bidder and her legacy still stands today as you can see in the way everybody these days is out for themselves and nobody wants to help the unfortunate people in our society.
How much did life drag you down between ’75 and ’85?
’75 to ’79 were brilliant as punk was at its height. ’79 to ’81 were good as the Aces done some cool shows including one with the Police. ’82 to ’85 were pretty rubbish musically, I gave up playing music altogether and was very depressed because I wasn’t playing. I threw myself into work and started a business which I sold when I started playing again. All good now.
How much did you give a damn about what would happen the next day?😀
Of course we always had some sense and tried to make is it possible to live reasonably. I had my first child in 1981 and my second child an 83 so I have to be able to put food on the table we didn’t have much but we were happy and it was a real joy to have children. That being said though we didn’t really give a fuck about what today would give us. Now as well as being active musically I am a busy granddad to five grandchildren and still happily married.
Footnote from Noel…..
All these types of interviews are great but they always want to know about our past and not about the present so, to finish I’d like to say a little bit about now. We’re coming into our 50th year of playing punk and I have changed from being drummer to being a front man which I’m really enjoying and the fans say I should have done it years ago. Hopefully, you will see us one day. The other guys in the band are great musicians. Pete Bradshaw on guitar, Simon Edwards on drums and Dave Jenkins on bass guitar.
These guys are the best musicians I have played with since I’ve started playing with Menace in ’76. We’re doing more gig now than ever, we have our own record label releasing exclusively Menace records. A book ISBN 978-1-3999-5861-5 has been written about us by Paul Marko called “Prog, Punk, Skinheads and Serendipity” that gives the whole on the unadulterated truth about Menace and the previous band Stonehenge going back to 1972.
I also want to say that this will be the last interview of this type as in future I want to speak and promote the new line up of Menace. I will still be happy to answer questions about the old band as it is part of our history but I want interviews to focus on what we’re doing now as well as the old.
As always thanks to everybody out there who have supported us over the years. Jumped on stage, jumped on us and made us feel like one of them!